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Alex Watts
8,396 PointsUnused variable.
Hello,
I have just started learning objective-c and was wondering why I got the message 'Unused variable' after I had written the following code:
int currentAge = 18;
After watching the tutorial at treehouse, Gabe Nadel's code looked liked this...
int currentAge;
currentAge = 18;
It seemed to work without displaying a message. Why is this?
2 Answers

Jennifer Nordell
Treehouse TeacherIn your code you both declare the variable and initialize it. However, the code they use declares the variable without setting a value. And then later they "use" the variable to assign a value. Now, how useful that code is is up for debate :) But the point is, the compiler tries to implement safeguards to keep you from declaring variables that never reappear in your code. For example if I have three variables x, y, and z. If I start writing my code then determine I don't actually NEED variable z, but forget to remove the declaration, the compiler will warn me about this. Hope that makes sense!

Alex Watts
8,396 PointsThanks Jennifer this was very helpful!